User:Gamoch/Janet Kelso

Janet Kelso (born 1975) is a South African computational biologist and Group leader of the Minerva Research Group for Bioinformatics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. She is best known for her work with the bio thematic analysis of ancient genomics and analyzing comparing DNA from previous humans (i.e. Neanderthals) with those of the present (homo erectus).

'''A previous challenge for computational biologists was the lack of proper DNA preservation and technology to analyze the nuclear genomes of the ancient humans. This obstacle strengthened Kelso's interest in bioinformatics and initially approached the issue using the reference based method. From there, her and her research team have made great advances in research towards ancient DNA.'''

Education
Kelso gained her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Natal in 1995 followed by Honours and Master of Science degrees in medical biochemistry and chemical pathology from the University of Cape Town in 1997 and 2000, respectively. She received her PhD in bioinformatics in 2003, from the University of the Western Cape, supervised by Winston Hide.

After completing her studies, from 1999-2004, Dr. Kelps conducted her postgraduate work at the South African National Bioinformatics Institute.

Research and Career
Kelso has carried out research in comparative primate genomics and has contributed to the Neanderthal, bonobo and orangutan genome projects. Since 2004, she has been Group leader of the Minerva Research Group for Bioinformatics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Her computational work consisted of generating sequences of DNA of the ancient humans including Neanderathals and other human forms, extracted from bones. At the institute Kelso conducted her research with the UK Biobank (UKB). The UKB was a new tool that could hold genetic and medical information for a singificantly large population. Through the system, Kelso and her colleagues found a correlation between Neantherthal variants and certain behaviors and traits. For instance, they could now calculate the probability of being an evening or morning person.

A significant contribution Kelso made was her discovery that some Neandethals mated and reproduced offspring with the ancestors of modern humans. After confirming her finding, her natural scientific curiosity pondered the long term effects. Kelso began to wonder its impact on how modern humans behave and their various phenotypes. Furthermore, the biologist is currently investifating the genotypes that lead to certain traits and their relation to Neantherthal genes. She is one of the few scientists to contribute to evolutionary research through studies done incorporating data from present-day humans.

Since 2013, she has been co-Executive Editor of the scientific journal Bioinformatics. Furthermore, in 2021, Kelso coauthored an article titled Ethics of DNA research on human remains: five globally applicable guidelines. She essentially wanted to promote proper ethical regulations concerning studies investigating ancient DNA, a deluxe but scarce resource.

Awards and Honors
Youtube notes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfLt5F7cyJw

- experienced in bio thematic analysis of ancient genomes

- looked at changes in molecular phenotypes

youtube 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK4zehsiFOo&t=1s

- generating sequences of ancient humans (neanderthals and other human forms) --> computational aspect

- how to analyze sequences from old bones (from those groups to ourselves) --> how we are related to them, how we interacted with them, what we got from them

- analyzing ancient genomes

- used to not be possible to analyze nuclear genomes of ancient humans

- DNA poorly preserved (damaged, not clean mess of different sequences)

- challenge: how to fish out the sequences/ used humanr reference genome as the bait (pulled similar sequences --> alignment tool) || hoe to prevent contamination from people that handle the bone, find methods for finding contaminaiton         - 1st approach: reference based method --> human reference to find neanderthal sequences (chemical damage pattern)

- building toolds for processing sequence data from ancient genomes; looking at other groups for relaitonship to neanderthals

- found we are their sister group with a common ancestor 60,000 years agp\o

twitter

- set of guidelines for ethical anceint DNA research https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04008-x

- ancient genomes are a rich resource

- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04008-x

linked in https://www.linkedin.com/checkpoint/lg/login-submit

Important Notes:

https://www.science.org/content/article/genetic-data-half-million-brits-reveal-ongoing-evolution-and-neanderthal-legacy